ONSET: To Serve and Protect

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ONSET: To Serve and Protect Page 32

by Glynn Stewart


  Chapter 39

  The tension in ONSET Thirteen’s common room was thick enough to be cut with a knife. Operation Sun Net was the most complex operation any of them had been on, dwarfed only by the outright war Hellet and Pell had fought in against the Incursion in Montana. Unlike the Incursion, though, they were on their own. If they screwed up, it would affect thousands of others, but none of those others could help them.

  David knew that his own presence didn’t help with the tension. He was an unknown factor, a new addition and untested in this team. To him, they were the unknown factors, and he found himself wishing he were back with ONSET Nine.

  But that wasn’t possible, so David, like the rest of ONSET Thirteen, sat in silence in the common room. McDermott sat off from the rest of the team in one corner, a communications headset on his head and a guitar on his lap as he played through a series of soft ballads. Walsh was sitting next to a row of potted plants, crooning softly to them and making them dance along with the Commander’s music.

  Lynch and Hellet both had materialized books from somewhere and had claimed chairs away from McDermott’s music. Pell was making a variety of small mechanical devices assemble, disassemble, and reassemble themselves into various forms. After a while of watching, David realized that each of the forms was actually functioning. He was moving through a cycle of about twelve different devices, including a short-range radar dish and what might have been a harpoon gun.

  Through McDermott’s music and Walsh and Pell’s playing with their powers, Stone simply sat against one wall, watching the room. David assured himself that it was only paranoia that insisted the massive man was watching him.

  David wasn’t aware of the time when Stone stood up and walked over to him.

  “White,” he said in that quiet, high-pitched voice that seemed so strange coming from such a large man. “Walk with me for a minute, will you?”

  David nodded slowly. He stood and eyed the tanned Stone for a moment, then gestured for the other man to lead the way. He had a sneaking suspicion what was going on, and he also knew that if the other man wanted to play power games, they needed to be finished quickly.

  The pair of men grabbed their coats against the late autumn mountain chill and walked out into the cold air. David carefully buttoned up his long blue duster, making sure he was free to move even as he kept an eye on the larger man.

  Stone led them around behind the back of the dormitory, into the lee of the building against the wind. David noted calmly in the back of his head that there were also no windows and likely no cameras bearing on this quiet spot, shaded from wind and other outside influence.

  “You didn’t bring me out here to walk in circles,” David told Stone dryly. “So, say your piece.”

  The bigger man tugged his heavy brown bomber jacket tighter and turned to face David, his tanned face red with the cold.

  “That’s how you want it, huh?” he whispered. “And here I was planning on sugar-coating things for you.”

  “In,” David checked his watch, “about seven or eight hours, you and I are going to go get shot at together. We may as well get this out of the way now.”

  Stone said nothing for a moment, then blurted, “You don’t know this team. You don’t know us at all, what we can do, how we operate.

  “I do know these people,” he continued. “I’ve worked with them and been second-in-command of this team for a year. I won’t let you get them killed because you don’t know them.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it,” David told him, but Stone continued as if he hadn’t heard him.

  “So, this is the deal,” the big man said flatly. “You can play figurehead as much as you want, but when we go into action tonight, you do what I say, or I frag you.”

  David looked at the bigger man in shock. He’d asked the other man to be up-front, but he hadn’t expected him to be quite that blunt.

  “This isn’t the time for power games,” he said slowly. “You’re what, twenty-five, Stone? I’m thirty-one. I’ve spent the last twelve years in the police. I’ve organized; I’ve led. I’ve fought this Church of the Black Sun before. But it boils down to this: Omicron says I’m in command, and that means I need to be in command.

  “So, you will follow my orders,” he told Stone firmly. “And if you try and frag me, you will regret it until the end of fucking time. Do I make myself clear, son?”

  In retrospect, David realized the patronizing son was a mistake, but he only realized that as Stone’s fist came swinging for his face. He barely ducked under the strike, and his palm slapped hard against Stone’s wrist to deflect a second fist.

  He jumped backward, out of Stone’s reach, and looked coldly at the younger man. For a moment, the two men stood there, staring at each other. David met Stone’s eyes and knew that, unless he wanted to get “accidentally” killed on the mission, he was going to have to prove himself to the younger man. There were a lot of ways to do that, but there was only one fast way.

  David reached up and undid the buttons on the heavy blue duster. He removed the coat and tossed it onto the snowbank next to the building, leaving him in his black ONSET armored bodysuit.

  “Lose the jacket, Stone,” he said grimly. “It’ll get in the way.”

  Stone didn’t hesitate, tossing his own heavy leather jacket onto David’s duster and raising his fists into a boxer’s defensive position. The two men circled each other, assessing. Stone had almost a foot on David in height but only a couple of inches in arm length, and David was actually broader across the shoulders than the bigger man. Stone was light on his feet for such a big man, David noted, and quick with it.

  Stone struck first, jabbing sharply at David’s chest. David met the blow with his open hand, trying to pull the other man and throw him. He felt the flesh under his hand turn cold and hard, and the sheer weight and momentum of Stone’s suddenly rock arm kept the other man going past him, throwing both of them off balance.

  They separated and circled again. David waited until a patch of snow was behind Stone and then moved forward, striking at the other man’s shoulder and midriff. Stone deflected the first strike, and the second slammed into his stomach.

  It felt like hitting a brick wall, and David felt his fingers break as his left hand slammed into the stone-covered flesh of Johnston’s midriff. The other man barely moved, and his rock-hard—literally—fist slammed into David’s shoulder.

  David stumbled back and shifted away from Stone as the telltale warmth ran through his fingers, which snapped back into place with a bolt of excruciating pain. He winced against the pain, and Stone struck, iron-hard fists shooting toward David’s chest and stomach.

  Even distracted by pain, the older man deflected the strikes. He didn’t try and throw Stone this time, simply focusing on knocking the blows away. As Stone recovered, David struck back, sliding under Stone’s extended fists to slam another blow against the big man’s solar plexus.

  This time, he was expecting to hit the stone wall of Stone’s skin, and turned the blow into more of a shove, saving him from more broken fingers. The bigger man stumbled back but jabbed forward as he did.

  David wasn’t expecting the counterstroke, and it slammed into his ribs with a crunching noise. He flew backward and hit the ground with a thump, and knew he had broken ribs.

  With a painfully deep breath, he focused the healing warmth he was starting to expect and gain some control over into his chest. Stabbing pain shot through him as his ribs popped back into place. Opening his eyes, he saw Stone coming toward him, and without thinking, lashed out.

  His foot slammed up, barely missing Stone’s groin to smash into his upper pelvic bone. Unlike the previous strikes, he hit flesh, not stone, and the bigger man stumbled backward. David got his legs underneath and sprang to his feet, his open hand moving in a powerful strike as he did.

  He hit Stone in the chest with his open hand, feeling rock through the other man’s armored bodysuit. Stone or not, the bigger man grunted as the blow
lifted him off his feet and tossed him away to land on the snowbank the two jackets covered.

  David paused, waiting for the other man to stand, but Stone merely rolled over to face him.

  “I thought I’d broken your ribs,” he said slowly, “I was checking on you.”

  “You did break my ribs,” David told him. “I healed them.”

  The two men stared at each other for a moment, and then Stone began to laugh, rubbing his lower stomach where David had kicked him.

  “That was nearly a very low blow,” he told David. “Sir.”

  Taking the sir as the concession he was sure it was, David stepped over to the bigger man and hauled him to his feet.

  “I wasn’t thinking,” he told Stone. “But if you cause trouble on this mission, I may kick that low intentionally.”

  Stone continued to grip his hand after standing, and David met his gaze evenly. The grip turned into a firm, non-breaking handshake.

  “You fuck up, I’ll still frag you,” Stone told David, his strange high-pitched voice calm. “Till then, you’re the boss. Boss.”

  “I can live with that condition.”

  #

  Majestic kept an eye on the communications network she’d hacked into at ONSET now. She knew it was interfering with her normal work, but other than stealing a multinational conglomerate’s third-quarter results before their publication, she hadn’t had much to do that week.

  She’d seeded enough warning tripwires into ONSET’s system that she knew that their sys-admins were no longer distracted by whatever had kept them tied up when she originally penetrated the system. She had to be more careful now, and limited her access to their files.

  That didn’t mean she’d stopped reading through their files, and she’d been saving a lot of it to her computer. There were now enough files and incriminating information on Majestic’s hard drive to blow an entire secret branch of the US government wide open.

  However, she’d also dug up enough to know just how powerful this “Omicron Branch” was. The very top of it appeared to be a Senate Committee—one that wielded the full power of Congress in affairs of the supernatural.

  She had enough to expose everything, but she’d read and seen too much. Even with all these files, going public would probably be a dramatic failure. People would think she was crazy. And she had no illusions about the government’s willingness to silence one criminal hacker who knew too much.

  Part of her wanted to kill the connections, delete her probes and tripwires, destroy the files on her computer and forget everything. Another part, to her great surprise, wondered what she could do to help them. To help, specifically, David White, to whom she’d done a great disservice.

  So, when the chatter level on ONSET’s network went up, she paid attention. Then she started digging into their files again, looking for the details of “Operation Sun Net”.

  Chapter 40

  No one commented on their absence or their snow-covered coats when David and Stone returned to the common room. David met the other man’s gaze as they hung up their coats and gave him a firm nod. Stone returned it and joined Pell at the table where the pilot continued to shift his mechanical parts through their continuing series of forms.

  David picked up a book, yet another of ONSET’s many books detailing previous supernatural incidents and events in the world, and began to read. He had a layman’s knowledge of world history, but he knew that these events weren’t known to anyone outside the small, secret supernatural communities and agencies of the world—and were far more immediately relevant to him now than most history.

  Shortly after the pair came back in, McDermott packed up his guitar and, in apparent response to some message on his headset, exited the building himself. The loss of his music left the room in an uncomfortable silence that reigned for a long time.

  David focused on his book—a record of a number of incidents involving trolls in central Europe. The label was applied to a small subset of supernaturals that had to eat human flesh to fuel their powers. Some of these supernaturals were people who awoke to the powers and a hunger they couldn’t sate. Some, however, seemed to just wake up out of the hills and come down to the valleys hunting.

  It was a sufficiently complex study that it drew David’s complete focus, and he lost track of time until he realized that McDermott had returned and was gesturing for everyone’s attention.

  “It’s six o’clock, people,” the Selkie said quietly once they were all looking at him. “So, five Pacific—T-minus one and a half hours. That makes it time for us to load up and get ready to move out. Our target’s event will be underway in an hour, so let’s get our part of the party ready.”

  It was as if some unspoken agreement had been concluded, and the team began to quietly talk to each other as they trooped into the armory behind the common room. Lockers lined the room and banged open as the team began to load up.

  The combat load-out started with the black armored bodysuit, which David was already wearing. The first items he removed from the locker were a number of shaped plates, aetherically enhanced ceramic inserts to his bodysuit. They slipped into carefully designed pockets on the suit, covering various vital regions.

  Next came the electronics harness. Two long CPU cases, as much enchanted armor as electronics, clipped to straps and a battery that tucked behind his lower back. More ceramic plates attached to the same straps, covering them and adding an inhuman curve to his torso. A second harness attached on to the base electronics net and slung over his left shoulder, holding a shoulder holster in place for the Omicron Silver pistol.

  The holster in place, he checked the chamber—empty—and other mechanisms of the surprisingly simple high-tech firearm. Finally, he took a long block of shining silver bullets with their plastic explosive bases and slid it into the base of the pistol. A panel slid home over them with a soft sound. Checking that the safety was on, David slid the pistol into its holster and attached it to the tiny electronic lead connecting the weapon’s electronic sight to his upgraded helmet systems. Four more magazines slid into armored pouches on the harness.

  David now slung out the third part of his harness. This one held the unimaginably sharp blade of his mageblade, the enchanted knife that had served him so well. The knife pressed against the right side of his lower torso, and the fabric clipped onto the rest of the harness.

  Now only the M4-Omicron remained of the kit, and David checked its chamber and mechanisms just as he’d done with the Silver. His inspection done, he slotted a magazine home and packed four more magazines away in more armored pouches.

  Slinging the rifle, he turned to look around at the rest of the team. To his surprise, he realized he was not the last one done. Pell was helping Lynch and Walsh check their weapons. He was even more surprised to realize that Stone wasn’t ready yet.

  Seeing that David was, the big man gestured him over. “Can you give me a hand here, White?” he asked.

  Surprised again at the younger man’s apparent friendliness after their earlier altercation, David joined him. “What do you need?” he asked.

  “Hold these,” Stone asked and passed David two round drums. Each was over two inches thick and easily ten across. “Thanks.”

  His hands no longer occupied, the big man quickly attached a pair of pockets unlike anything David had ever seen to his combat harness. He retrieved the drums and slotted them in.

  “What are those?” David finally asked.

  “Custom-built hundred-round drums,” Stone replied quietly, reaching into his locker and removing his main weapon—a meter-long stock of metal with an odd crystalline sleeve around the barrel. “Belt feed wasn’t particularly useful for me—recoil doesn’t bother me, so I don’t need a tripod, and the belt kept hitting me and jamming. So, we modified the gun.”

  As he was speaking, the big man was checking the breach and mechanism of the big M60 machine gun and pulling out a third of the ridiculously huge ammo drums.

  “This girl started
life as a short-barreled M60E4,” he told David. “We stripped out some of the recoil gadgets and added in what downstairs calls ‘aetherically enhanced’ cooling equipment.” He tapped the crystalline sleeve on the end of the weapon to show what he meant. “Then they modified it for drum loading. Hold her for me?” he asked.

  Bemusedly, David took the only barely man-portable weapon from the big Empowered and held it as Stone inspected the docking sleeve for his drum. With a high-pitched mutter of “clear,” Stone snapped the drum onto the weapon. Holding on to the weapon for a moment, David hefted it. With his strength, he could hold the weapon in the same stance as a rifle, and the drum hung to the right and out, away from the shooter.

  Empowered strength or not, David knew he couldn’t fire the thing. Alexandra had used Empowered strength to carry heavy weapons like this and their ammo, but she’d used a bipod or tripod like anyone else to use the guns. Strength only went so far with recoil. Stone, however, could turn the shoulder and arm firing the weapon to rock…which meant recoil really wouldn’t bother him.

  David handed the huge weapon back to its owner with a new spark of respect for the big man. He knew that was the point, but it still made an impression.

  Stone took the weapon with practiced ease and swung it into the same ready position as the others carried their much smaller M4s.

  “Your girl, huh?” David asked as he looked at the Rambo-esque profile of his new squad mate.

  “Yup,” Stone agreed. “I call her Becky.”

  “Becky, by the way,” Pell’s voice interjected as the other man, a squat dwarf compared to Stone or even David, joined them, “is the name of his ex-wife. I met her,” he added. “The gun is aptly named.”

  A chuckle ran around the room, and then all their eyes snapped to Commander McDermott standing in the center of the room. His uniform was all covered in an odd, almost wet-looking material, and all the pockets and holsters were sealed. Unlike the rest, he did not hold an M4 or a “Becky”.

 

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